Every morning, I wake up to the same sounds that millions of others in Jakarta hear such as honking traffic, sweeping brooms, and somewhere underneath it all, the silent, steady piling of trash.
It’s not just on the streets. It’s in our rivers, buried beneath our beaches, and floating alongside our ferry rides. From the once-pristine shores of Bali, now shadowed by drifting debris, to the Citarum River, once dubbed the most polluted river in the world, our waste problem is not just about garbage. It is about how we live, what we value, and what we choose to ignore.
Let us be real. Indonesia has a massive trash problem, and we all see it. According to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, the country generated 68.5 million tons of waste in 2022, and only about 17.5% was recycled (ANTARA News, 2023).
The rest? It either piles up in overflowing landfills, gets burned in open air (especially in rural areas), or worse, it flows directly into our rivers and seas. Plastic clogs our waterways, causing flooding and damaging marine ecosystems.
In 2017, Indonesia committed to reducing marine plastic waste by 70% by 2025, and the National Waste Management Policy (Jakstranas) was launched to support this (World Bank, 2021).
Some local governments are taking bold steps too, Bali banned single-use plastics in 2019 (Bali Provincial Government, 2019), and Surabaya runs one of the most effective waste-to-energy programs in the country (UNEP, 2021). These policies matter. But they are not enough.
Because let’s be honest: you can clean a river with just a policy. And you can’t fix a landfill with a single ban.
So what can we do? I believe the real game-changer is education.
Why Is Trash Taking Over?
I see it every day. Plastic bottles floating down gutters. Food wrappers tucked behind trees. Overflowing bins that never seem to get emptied. It is easy to point fingers at the government or big industries. But if I am being honest? We’re all part of the problem.
We toss things out without a second thought. I’ve seen it happen at the market, even in schools. Is this recyclable? Can this be composted? What happens if I mix it all together? Most people don’t know. And it’s not because they don’t care, it’s because no one ever taught them. That’s where I believe change has to begin. Not with more cleanup drives or another “no plastic bag” sign at the store but with education. Real, transformative, consistent education.
If we want lasting change, we need to start young. Children today are growing up in a country overwhelmed by waste. But they also hold the power to reverse it, if we give them the tools. And some schools are already showing what’s possible.
During my recent research, I came across a remarkable school in East Java that’s actively implementing the Adiwiyata program, a national initiative launched by Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry to integrate environmental education into school culture and curriculum.
What struck me most was how deeply embedded sustainability had become in the students’ daily lives. They don’t just learn about waste management, they practice it. In the school I observed, students compost leftover food from the canteen, sort waste into color-coded bins, and bring their own reusable lunch kits.
Their learning environment isn’t limited to four walls; it spills into organic gardens, waste banks, and collaborative clean-up projects with the surrounding community. These practices are not isolated efforts, they’re part of a growing movement to raise a generation of environmentally literate citizens (Aqilah & Lathifah, 2023; Nurwaqidah et al., 2020).
Additionally, I came across a powerful case study from Bali that deeply resonated with me, the Plastic Exchange program. This initiative, launched in May 2020 by social entrepreneur I Made Janur Yasa in Tabanan, exemplifies how environmental and socio-economic challenges can be tackled simultaneously through grassroots innovation.
The program was developed at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Bali faced not only a rising plastic waste crisis but also widespread economic hardship due to the collapse of its tourism industry (Indonesia Expat, 2021; CNA, 2021).
What struck me about this initiative was its simplicity and impact: residents collect and sort plastic waste, which is then exchanged for rice. This approach doesn’t just encourage better waste management, it restores a sense of dignity and purpose to those participating.
Through my study, it became clear that the Plastic Exchange program serves as more than just an environmental solution; it is a community-driven model that addresses immediate human needs while fostering long-term behavioral change.
When waste education becomes more than just a one-day seminar, when it becomes a part of daily learning, it rewires the way kids think. It becomes normal to say no to single-use plastics. It becomes instinctive to sort food waste from plastic wrap. And here’s the magic: kids take these lessons home. I’ve seen students teach their parents how to recycle, or ask shop owners to skip plastic bags. One child can shift an entire household. Multiply that by thousands? You get a movement.
Imagine if every school in Indonesia integrated practical, hands-on waste education into their core subjects. Imagine if environmental literacy became just as essential as math or Bahasa Indonesia. It’s already starting.
Under the National Waste Management Strategy (Jakstranas), Indonesia has set ambitious targets to reduce waste by 30% and manage 70% of waste by 2025 (Government of Indonesia, 2017).
But these goals will only be met if we stop treating trash as someone else’s problem and start building a generation that understands how their daily choices shape the world around them.
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